I’ve coached a number of people over the years who have both been expert practitioners in their field (entrepreneurs, artists, technical specialists…), and who have also been responsible for the running of their business (directors, partners or equivalents).

Whilst their coaching has at times focussed on the development of their craft or expertise, most often the work has come under the heading of being an effective contributor to running the business. How to be a shaper and leader of strategy, for example, or how to manage relationships with colleagues, or how to take charge of their own future within the enterprise.

The refining of their technical expertise, their craft, whatever made them create or join the business in the first place, has often happened intuitively, outside the coaching and instead through their daily practice, almost without them noticing. And there’s no surprise here, as of course this craft is what lights their fire! It’s where they have chosen to put their heart and soul, and where they find meaning in work. So they already have effective strategies for developing this part of themselves; and these strategies are the reason they became experts.

But few go into business solely in order to go into business. Few gladly choose the path of people management. Few have set themselves the primary lifetime goal of effective delegation or increased productivity, or minimising the effects of stress.

So these latter topics are the ones which sometimes turn up in coaching, because for these experts they are not the arena of intuitive skills. They instead can be experienced for some people as arenas of uncertainty, of no right answers, or of inexperience, where a false step might lead to further complications.

In short, they are arenas where conscious attention has to be paid to ensure the experiences are unpacked and the learning converted into more effective future action. And that is why there are so relevant agenda items for coaching, in support of the growth of the whole person as an effective practitioner.

The news that Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party have (perhaps temporarily) delayed the Brexit negotiations is the latest version of a story right out of Grimm’s fairy tales.

Some versions of the Grimms’ story begin with an invitation sent to 12 fairies to each give a blessing to a new-born princess. A thirteenth – and uninvited – fairy, hearing what the others are up to, turns up in a rage and delivers a curse rather than a blessing.

This 13th fairy is sometimes depicted as an evil fairy; but according to Peter Hawkins of CSTD, from whom I’m proudly borrowing the idea for this blog, this fairy isn’t evil. They’re just mad at being forgotten.

The result: they turn up late, and make trouble – because they were forgotten in the first place.

So when I heard the news this morning, my fanciful mind wondered if the DUP might be feeling like a thirteenth fairy.

And the link to coaching?

When we’re working with teams, or unpicking complex ideas, or making decisions which affect a range of stakeholders, it’s not always easy to identify all those who need to be involved.

So what might be the implications for coaches, supervisors and for those involved in strategic planning processes?

When supervising a coach who is coaching a team: invite them to map the team on a flipchart, and as a coach be interested in who turns up ‘late’ in the story; and ask, Who else isn’t on the flipchart yet? How are they connected to the other people on the flipchart? What message are they bringing?

When providing conflict coaching: asking who else is there in the conflict – perhaps someone on the sidelines?, or who might appear less visible, who could offer another perspective or who might have skills or resources to help bring about resolution.

When doing a stakeholder analysis with colleagues, asking again and again: Who else have we forgotten? Who else has an interest in what we’re deciding? If we were to look back to today, who might we realise needed to be inside the tent with us?

When coaching someone who is facing a dilemma or a difficult decision: which opinions haven’t they paid attention to yet? Is there any voice inside them which hasn’t yet been heard? (this might be the voice of the outcome or some deep yearning which they haven’t yet dared to admit to themselves). What other options are available, in addition to the possibilities they’ve already thought of?

I mentioned the phrase Culture will eat your strategy for breakfast in our coaching session last week, and you asked for more details.

I hope the following is helpful?

“Culture eats your strategy for breakfast” is attributed by Peter Hawkins to Peter Drucker – even though apparently neither of them can find the original quotation!

On the surface, the phrase simply suggests that it’s irrelevant how much time and care an organisation pours into creating a strategy: it will be powerless against the prevailing internal culture, which will have far more impact on future behaviour.

For me there are also some deeper truths within the phrase, with implications for other realities of organisational life.

First to say, perhaps, is that we can’t expect a strategy-shaping process on its own to change the culture. An organisation’s culture is a product of history, attitudes, beliefs and behaviours. It is a long-enduring reality. Culture is what is surprising or confusing to us when we’re a new-starter – and, infamously, culture is what we then are blind to after three months in the job.

Culture begins to shape itself the moment the organisation begins. If you’ve ever been involved at the start of an organisation or group, you may have witnessed this process happening around you.

(For more information, Edgar Schein wrote some of the most influential and enduring ideas on understanding organisational culture.)

The ‘joke’ is that it takes seven years to change significantly a culture. I don’t think that’s necessarily true in every case, but there’s no doubt that an organisational culture can endure even if the majority of staff leave and are replaced by new-comers.

Second, your strategy is enacted by, or mediated through, the culture. Culture is day-to-day, and every day. It regulates default behaviours and decisions. So if the strategy document imagines radically different behaviours, instead what will happen is more of the past. People will say ‘yes’ and act ‘no’.

This is why a good culture is such a prized organisational goal.

The reality, however, is the culture is what the leadership collectively behave (another Peter Hawkins quote). So changing a culture often requires an appreciative or solutions-focussed approach: identifying which behaviours do we want more of, or which of the staff are holding the attitudes or values we want everyone to have; and then naming and affirming those and giving opportunities to copy them. That’s why story-telling can work well in culture-change. And woe betide the leadership team when they fall back into the old ways without accountability or explanation: contradictions between espoused values and actual behaviour are never more obvious (and damaging) than in organisational life.

Have you ever thought of leadership, or leaderful behaviour, as a hosting activity?

If you’re hosting a meeting, you might find yourself:

Providing conditions and group process for people to work together

Ensuring the resource of time (the scarcest commodity of all)

Keeping bureaucracy at bay

Reflecting back how people are doing, and insisting that everyone – and the system itself – creates space for reflection and learning

Co-designing relevant measures of progress

And from a wider perspective, I’m finding that more and more people are fulfilling their leadership roles in organisations by acting in similar ways. They’re giving up trying to manage away instability, and instead to create an organisation which can survive and thrive within its unstable world.

If this sounds relevant to you, you may be interested in Meg’s article “Leadership in the age of complexity: from hero to host”. It is full of really practical, hands-on advice for those who bear responsibility for supporting people or organisations through times of complexity and difficulty.

“From hero to host”?

It can be tempting in these times to yearn for an old-fashioned hero to steer us through. You know, the hero in the movies who rides up on a horse just at the moment of crisis. They have the guns on their hips and all the answers in their saddlebag. They’re great at issuing orders and saying they’re keeping control of everything (despite what everyone else knows).

Well, Meg offers some advice here.

“It is time for all the heroes to go home, as the poet William Stafford wrote. It is time for us to give up these hopes and expectations that only bleed dependency and passivity, and that do not give us solutions to the challenges we face. … It is time to face the truth of our situation – that we’re all in this together, that we all have a voice – and figure out how to mobilize the hearts and minds of everyone in our workplaces and communities.”

And so what is better, other than more command and control? To build buy-in through collaboration; to reward people’s yearning for meaning and possibility in their lives and work; to be a holding vessel, hosting conditions for working and learning together.

And if we’re working with people who have given up, or who are feeling discounted, ignored or invisible: let’s use our deep sincerity, and our convening skills, to open up invitations to re-engagement.

And what if we think we’re heroes too? Our good intentions, and our dreams for community and planet, drive us to work and work; and somehow if we just worker harder and smarter, we’ll breakthrough and everything will be sorted.

Well, there’s some final advice for you from Meg: it’s time for the heroes to go home!

And, to notice that actually we’re not alone, we’re surrounded by those who want to help and who aren’t anyway looking for heroes.

I was introduced at about that time to Meg’s writings (all Meg’s articles, recorded talks etc are freely available at http://margaretwheatley.com/library/) by my consultant/coaching colleague, Penny Kay, and together we’ve kept in touch with Meg’s new thinking over the years.

So you can imagine our delighted when Meg responded to our out-of-the-blue “20th anniversary e-mail”, inviting her to put on an event on leadership next time she was in the UK.

Leadership in these times is the result.

The day offers a great opportunity for those who work with people in leadership roles, to be more aware of effective contemporary leadership, and to support leaders to reclaim a leadership which re-engages people and creates possibility even amidst disruption and distraction.

“Good leaders find it increasingly difficult to use the processes and practices that worked well in the past to evoke people’s inherent motivation, commitment, and creativity. Yet if we notice who we’ve become, we can recommit to who we choose to be as a leader for this time.” Meg Wheatley

With my coaching colleague Penny Kay, I am co-hosting a rare one day event with Margaret Wheatley on 9th November 2017 in London.

Some of you have been asking about outcomes for the day. You will be leaving the seminar with so many thoughts and feelings and aspirations I am sure, but here is what Meg has said recently about what to expect:

This is a time of profound disruption, when the best laid plans of leaders can be swept away by both man-made and natural disasters. Added to this uncertainty are the increasing levels of distraction, time compression, anxiety and stress that have distorted people’s lives and attitudes. Good leaders find it increasingly difficult to use the processes and practices that worked well in the past to evoke people’s inherent motivation, commitment, and creativity. Yet if we notice who we’ve become, we can recommit to who we choose to be as a leader for this time. Contemplation, learning from experience, and thinking are the keys to assist us in reclaiming leadership that re-engages people and creates possibility even amidst disruption.

Outcomes from the day:

1. To develop increased awareness of who you’ve become as a leader, given the pressures and stresses of this time

2. To commit to leadership that best serves people at this time, i.e. trustworthy, ethical, discerning

3. To experience the power of contemplation and time to think

4. To commit to instituting time to think, both personally and for your team or organization.

As befits someone with such a global reputation, we’re delighted to see the widening international participation at Meg Wheatley’s Leadership in these times workshop in London on 9 November.

We’ve welcomed recent bookings from continental Europe, expanding both the insights available and the potential outcomes for this day-long inquiry into leadership: how has our own leadership has changed in the past two decades; and what form of leadership are we called to?